HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
Built in 1889 for miners' children and surviving the 1898 Park City fire, this boutique hotel's top-floor room is cited by ghost tour guides as the most haunted location in Old Town
543 Park Ave, Park City, UT 84060
Research updated August 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Luxury boutique hotel; room rates apply for overnight stays
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic hotel with elevator access; standard hotel interior
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1889 · Survived the 1898 Park City Fire · Park City Pioneer Education History · Adaptive Reuse — School to Hotel · Official Park City Ghost Tour Site
Park City grew rapidly in the 1880s on the strength of silver mining, and by 1889 the community needed a proper school. Washington School House was one of three built that decade, named for the first president and constructed in the hammered limestone that defined the better Park City buildings of the era. The school educated the children of miners and tradespeople in a town that was otherwise rough and transient.
The 1898 fire burned most of Park City's wooden commercial district, but the limestone schoolhouse survived — one of a handful of structures from that era still standing in Old Town. When the school was eventually closed, the building served as a dance hall for the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, a use that continued into the mid-twentieth century.
The building reopened as a bed and breakfast in 1984, one of the first adaptive reuse hospitality projects in Park City's historic district. By 2011 it had changed hands multiple times; new owners undertook a full renovation that brought the building to its current form as a twelve-room luxury boutique hotel. The hammered limestone exterior and original schoolhouse layout remain intact. The hotel is included on the Official Park City Ghost Tour as a regular stop.
Sources
The ghost story attached to the Washington School House is relatively contained: a child's voice, heard when no children are present. Ghost tour guides have named the figure as Hugh Bates, described as a grade-school-age boy associated with the building's time as an active school. The specific circumstances of his connection to the building — whether he died there or simply attended and is somehow residually present — are not established in historical records; the account circulates through the ghost tour tradition.
The physical anomaly most frequently cited is the temperature in the top-floor room, which investigators and tour guides describe as dropping more than 30 degrees within seconds during investigations, without any corresponding mechanical explanation. The Visit Park City ghost tour feature documents this as the defining paranormal detail of the building, citing it as the reason the room earned its reputation as 'the most haunted place in Park City.'
The Park Record's 2025 coverage of the ghost tour noted the hotel as a regular stop, with the child voice and temperature anomaly forming the core of the narrative. A paranormal investigation group's account describes the temperature measurement as documented across multiple visits, though the original recording data is not publicly archived.
Notable Entities
Where this legend is told
The hotel offers twelve rooms and suites, with the top-floor room long cited by Park City Ghost Tour guides as the spot where investigators have recorded a temperature drop of more than 30 degrees within seconds. The hotel does not stage paranormal experiences; guests book standard hotel rooms through the website.
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